Welcome to an exciting new monthly Go1 blog series: what’s trending in learning? Keen-eyed readers might have formerly known this series as ‘The Content Insider’. We thought it was time for a refresh, so we’ve adjusted the format, and now we’re back, and better than ever. For long-time fans of the Content Insider: don’t fret! We’ve kept all the best bits while adding in a few more. You can’t have too much of a good thing, right? We’ll continue delivering the same essential information to ensure your L&D team runs smoothly, just in a shiny new format.  

In this debut edition, we’ll shine a spotlight on compliance and retention courses, before sharing the best new and returning content providers in the Go1 Library. So, what’s trending in learning this March? 

Topic spotlight: compliance and retention  

Every month, we’ll focus on a different L&D topic, recommending associated courses from the Go1 library. To kick things off, it’s a big one: compliance and retention. While we probably don’t need to tell you how important these topics are (very!), a quick reminder couldn’t hurt: 87% percent of HR leaders say their employee L&D program is critical to retaining talent.  

Here are five great courses on compliance, retention, and diversity to help you retain employees. Content varies from four minutes of microlearning to an in-depth, hour-long course — plus plenty in between to suit anyone’s training needs.  

1. Anti-Racism in the Workplace (CPD Certified) by iAM Learning (15 mins)  

Course description: You’ll learn to define racism, with an emphasis on anti-racism policies. You’ll also learn the primary forms racism takes in organizations and how to prevent it by suggesting areas where your organizational anti-racism strategy could improve.  

2. Maternal Wall Bias and the Motherhood Penalty by Emtrain (4 mins) 

 Course description: This skill-building lesson teaches you about the “maternal wall” bias, addressing how ideas of motherhood and gender roles create barriers to workplace advancement. This course will teach leaders how to provide flexibility and support employees after they become mothers. 

3. Unconscious Bias & Ageism by Maguire (30 mins)  

Course description: Recommended for managers who want to improve their communication and leadership skills and understand bias, this CPD-accredited module will teach you about unconscious bias, ageism, stereotypes, and social categorization, including how to spot these factors when recruiting.  

4. Managing compliance by Catalyst online learning portal (1hr)  

Course description: This module delves deeper into legal and ethical compliance, helping you: 

Research the compliance requirements specific to your area of work 

Explain the requirements of mandatory reporting 

Maintain compliance-related documentation and records 

Recognize the seriousness of non-compliance 

5. Talent retention by Coorpacademy (24 mins)

Course description: How does a company become a champion of retention? This course deconstructs the misconceptions surrounding retention and provides the key to understanding the new habits of the labor market. It raises the question of the role of managers and human resources and lists good practices for retaining employees by remaining flexible and arming yourself with the right tools to enhance each person's skills.

Simon Sez IT recently added over 200 new titles to the Go1 library on Generative AI, Agile Project Management, Microsoft Office Applications, and more. Some highlights include:  

A 5-part cybersecurity awareness series  

An introduction to data visualization and business intelligence principles  

And 235 other great new courses to explore! 

This new content partner is a dream for copywriters or anyone looking to improve their writing skills. Emphasis Training covers writing and communication skills on three main topics: effective email communication, writing techniques, and grammar, and writing structure and presentation. Courses are all bite-sized (five minutes or less), making them highly convenient and accessible. Titles include: 

Dash or hyphen - what's the difference? 

Are these words dragging your writing down? 

FutureThink is a brand new content partner, with a strong focus on soft skills content. They offer 21 courses in seven languages (for 147 courses): English, Arabic, French, Spanish, German, Portuguese, and Chinese, making them a perfect fit for an international company or a multi-lingual office. Highlights include:  

Three content providers that we’re loving in March

Every month, we’ll share three content providers that we love and think you'll too. This month, we’re kicking off with three of our favorites.  

Founded in the wake of #MeToo, EasyLlama’s mission is to equip companies with engaging training that promotes a safe, inclusive, and equitable work environment. This makes Easy Llama an excellent choice for industry-specific compliance training. EasyLlama’s courses meet compliance regulations in all 50 US states, while their worldwide courses are an equally wonderful choice for global audiences. 

Topic coverage: Sexual Harassment, DE&I, Code of Conduct & Ethics, Violence, HIPPA, and more  

Course lengths: Ranging from five minutes to over two hours 

Highlighted course: Workplace diversity and inclusion (30 mins) 

Big Canvas is a passionate team of educators, designers, and developers crafting online learning solutions for 25+ years on topics such as Bullying and Harassment, Occupational Health and Safety Responsibilities for Workers, Office Ergonomics, and 200+ others.  

Topic coverage: Health and Safety, Crisis Management, HR Compliance, Fire Safety, Diversity, and Inclusion, and more  

Course lengths: Ranging from 12 minutes to over two hours   

Highlighted course: Chain of Responsibility (1hr 30 minutes)  

Umbrella HR leverages a network of talented HR and D&I practitioners to help you create successful, welcoming workplaces. With over 50 years of combined experience in the field, their content focuses on individual stages of the employee lifecycle. With heaps of short, bite-sized courses, Umbrella HR is a great option for time-starved employees.  

Topic coverage: Human Resource Management, Diversity & Inclusion, Mental Health & Wellbeing, HR Compliance, Harassment & Bullying, and more  

Course lengths: All courses are ten minutes or less, with most being five minutes or less  

Highlighted course: Microlearning: Neurodiversity - ADHD (5 mins)   

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs. 

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In this debut edition, we’ll shine a spotlight on compliance and retention courses, before sharing the best new and returning content providers in the Go1 Library.

What’s trending in learning? March 2024

What’s trending in learning? Compliance and retention in March 2024

In the middle of a busy workday, getting an email reminder about mandatory compliance training can make employees feel irritated, stressed out, and even downright frustrated. It’s not unusual for individuals to ignore these emails, completely forget about them, and then find themselves rushing to complete their compliance training at the last minute—and, let’s be honest, probably not comprehending much of what they’re learning in the process. 

But what if compliance training was more than what many may see as a boring, time-consuming obligation? What if these trainings helped employees feel more agile and informed so they could carry out their work ethically? 

In this article, we'll explore strategies you can use to transform compliance training from a dreaded chore into a source of value employees are eager to engage in. Ready to revolutionize your approach to compliance training? Keep reading! 

Leverage microlearning to engage employees 

Compliance training shouldn’t take your team a full day to complete. Requiring employees to spend hours at a time on compliance training not only consumes time employees may be relying on to finish a project, but it also means you’re likely feeding learners way more information than they can realistically retain. 

Instead, consider implementing microlearning. Microlearning is digestible content delivered in bite-sized snippets, and for compliance trainings these snippets are typically around 10–30 minutes long. Now, we’re not saying you need to provide employees with only 10–30 minutes of compliance training total per year, as that probably won’t meet regulatory practice. What you might consider, though, is providing multiple pieces of microlearning content to complete over time. 

Our tip: Deliver all microlearning courses at once with a common due date, or deliver one piece of microlearning per week for four weeks, allowing employees to engage in short bursts of learning over the span of a month. This way, the course or training can be picked apart and employees can sit with what they learn. Think of your team and how they learn best when you choose which method works best for them. 

Compliance training isn’t something employees should do once a year and then forget about. With microlearning, you can use compliance training as an ongoing reminder of how to stay safe and mitigate risk. Because this content is short and easy to complete, you might use it throughout the year. For example, choose a month to focus on DE&I and assign a microlearning course about the importance of diversity & bullying prevention. 

Go1’s content library features many content providers who offer unique microlearning courses. Easy Llama’s learning content, for example, includes video scenarios that are presented as Facetime chats, and Marcom’s compliance content is largely set in real-world contexts and features realistic scenarios. 

Segmenting your training into small doses of information creates an approach that employees can fit into their schedule, allowing for better information processing and retention. This type of segmented learning is less overwhelming and more focused, and it enables employees to learn on their own time, at their own pace. Plus, microlearning makes it easier for employees to revisit and review content whenever necessary, resulting in a more impactful, long-lasting training experience. 

Incorporate real-world scenarios specific to your organization 

Compliance training shouldn't be rushed through just to get to the end of it; it’s important that employees actually understand the training content in order to carry out their work ethically and responsibly. Rather than assigning employees generic training and hoping for the best, integrating real-life scenarios into your training can help your team better grasp compliance concepts and understand how to incorporate them into their work. 

Consider sharing real-life successes and failures that your organization or organizations in your industry have experienced. Analyzing personalized or relatable compliance case studies will help employees see the direct impact of their behaviors in upholding ethical practices. If you’re looking to offload some of that personalization work, with Go1, L&D admins can create customized hybrid courses using our lightweight course builder. This allows organizations to create training tailored to their unique policies and compliance scenarios to ensure employees fully understand how to adhere to your company standards. 

Experiential learning strengthens the brain’s neural connections, accelerating learning and improving retention. Offering simulation exercises and role-playing is a great way to help employees put their knowledge to practice and make the theoretical tangible. When an employee understands how to deal with a compliance issue in real time, they're no longer just taking in information; they're embodying an experience so they know how to react if a similar situation ever occurs. 

If you’re still relying on white boards, picking scenarios out of a hat, or an online spinning wheel for interaction, it’s time to update your training with modern technology to better engage your employees. Cutting-edge tools like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) can provide immersive experiences that make training more exciting and interesting. 

Research suggests that we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, and a staggering 90% of what we do. Interactive technologies take training to the realm of doing and seeing, rather than simply reading an article or watching a video. And the more senses you engage, the more likely the information is to stick! 

Imagine stepping into a realistic compliance scenario, where every decision you make actually changes the story’s outcome. A compliance video game doesn’t sound half bad, does it? VR and AR can do just that by providing real-world, interactive experiences employees need to practice compliance concepts. AR and VR are the next best thing to on-the-job training, without the risk of real-world mistakes. 

It’s no secret that our society loves games—from sports and fitness to board games, video games, and more, nearly everyone engages in some type of game. When it comes to training, gamification can boost engagement, increase information retention, and encourage correct application of compliance information. 

Adding leaderboards and rewards, like virtual badges and tangible incentives, to training modules can turn compliance into a friendly competition and reinforce good training behaviors. You might also consider using a gamified training course that immerses learners in a story to add interest and excitement. Ultimately, compliance content that incorporates achievements and milestones, as well as interactive elements, gives employees clear, tangible goals to strive for, making the learning process feel like a series of wins.  

By prioritizing a culture of two-way communication, employees will feel less like passive learners and more like active contributors to their own learning. Invite your team to provide feedback through surveys, open forums, or even dedicated feedback sessions. When employees have a say in how they're learning, engagement skyrockets. 

It’s up to you to update, revise, and refresh your training content using the feedback you receive from your team. This iterative process ensures that your compliance training stays current and relevant, and that employees are learning and complying with your organization's policies. Compliance isn't static; it's a continually evolving topic, and your training materials should reflect that dynamism. 

It’s time to transform compliance training from a dreaded requirement into a valuable and enjoyable part of your organization's culture. These strategies will not only elevate your training but also build a workforce of informed employees who approach their work responsibly. To effectively introduce new compliance training, make sure you’re curating content that’s relevant to your business’s unique needs.  

We can help with this if you’re stuck or looking to change up your current strategy. Go1 provides compliance courses based on location, business size, and industry needs. We’re here to help you look at compliance through a new lens—not as a box-checking exercise, but as an opportunity for professional growth, risk management, and, above all, ethical practice. 

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay up to date on all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to discover how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs. 

Learn how to reframe compliance training from a chore to a source of value, using training content to foster a culture of ethical practice.

How to mitigate risk by boosting engagement in compliance training

Pop quiz (don’t worry, we promise it’s easy): last week, did you do any of the following?  

If you answered ‘yes,’ you’re not alone. That would make you one of ChatGPT’s 100 million weekly users, or the creator of one of DALL-E’s 14 million weekly images. Perhaps you work for one of the 35% of businesses that regularly use AI.  

A decade ago, this question would have seemed ridiculous. AI was a far-flung fantasy. Now, it's an everyday tool, useful for both work and leisure. And as the technology evolves, the future looks even brighter.  

Today, we’ll glimpse into that future, as we announce our latest product offering: Go1 AI. With Go1 AI, admins can turbocharge the content discovery, curation, and selection process, boosting productivity and efficiency through features like enhanced search functionality, AI chat, and advanced personalization options.  

We’ll share the key details of this new offering, discussing the benefits of Gen AI for personalized learning, before explaining Go1 AI’s features, showing how it supports admins, and sharing testimonials from some of our beta testers.  

There aren’t many things that all L&D leaders agree on. However, the significance of personalized learning is an exception. A whopping 93% of high-performing organizations agree that personalized learning supports employees in reaching their professional goals more efficiently. Yet, achieving personalized learning is easier said than done — especially at scale. Enter, Go1 AI.   

With Go1 AI, admins using Go1 can now create personalized experiences, with help from an unbeatable algorithm that sits on top of the largest content library for training, compliance, and personal development. 

Go1 AI includes several features that make admin’s lives easier. This means you can spend more time doing the work that really matters, leaving Go1 AI to handle the time-consuming curation.  

Go beyond merely matching keywords to receive more contextually relevant results. As you search for content, Go1 AI understands the underlying intent behind your search query and adds suggestions, surfacing the best-matched recommendations by mapping out the Go1 library in seconds.  

With AI chat, you can refine, identify, and group skills, discover, compare, and filter content, ask clarifying questions, add content to your library, and more. Before long, we’ll be adding additional AI chat features, so stay tuned.  

This is where personalized learning shines. Previously, personalized playlists had to be hand-curated. Now, Go1 AI lets L&D admins generate playlists from scratch based on their unique goals and parameters. Instead of browsing the entire library to manually create playlists, Go1 AI curates relevant, personalized playlists in seconds, making it scalable. Simply input your learning goals, refine your parameters, and let Go1 AI do the rest. 

Our approach sets us apart from other providers as we focus not on a single test or skill assessment, but on building comprehensive learner profiles to thoroughly understand learner’s needs. By asking relevant questions throughout the learning journey, we can consistently infer learners’ needs and recommend appropriate content. 

Go1 AI is designed with L&D admins in mind. We want to make your lives easier. As Dan Hayward, Go1’s Chief Customer Officer, says, “empowering L&D admins is essential to supporting the learning journeys of our customers. Go1 AI provides ‘always on’ access to learning and supercharges the ability to tailor individual learning experiences to employees' preferences, needs and learning styles.” 

Go1 AI streamlines how admins search our library by sharing powerful content recommendations, comparing relevant courses, and curating tailored playlists. We believe this level of granularity empowers admins to deliver personalized learning like never before. 

What’s more, we're integrating AI across the board, embedding AI-powered insights directly into the Go1 product to support administrators throughout their workflow. We want to leverage AI to handle 80% of your task, ensuring it’s a powerful ally for L&D administrators. 

Don’t just take our word for it, Go1 AI has completed extensive beta testing with some of our existing customers and partners. Here’s what they had to say.  

“We appreciate the diversity of learning content available to us in the Go1 platform, but we don’t want to get stuck in choice overload when building content playlists,” said Andrew James, digital learning manager at Lloyd’s. “Go1 has streamlined our curation workflow while adding confidence that we found the most relevant content for our team as they explore their own learning and skills development.” 

Or, as Holger Seim, Chief Product Officer at Go1, put it, "Having a vast library of learning content isn’t enough to engage learners in the workplace. L&D leaders need to surface the right content at the right time for each learner to achieve the best outcomes. By leveraging the wealth of data within our content library, Go1 is in the best position to provide smarter recommendations to L&D departments so they can build the most personalized and effective learning programs for their people." 

Don’t worry, among this talk of advanced features and artificial intelligence, we haven’t forgotten that our product is fundamentally for humans. Whether you’re worried AI will take your job, fearful of a robot uprising, or just overwhelmed by this whole AI thing, we’re here to reassure you: Go1 AI will always put humans first. Why? A couple of things set Go1 AI apart.  

Firstly, Go1 AI is trained on the world’s largest learning dataset. This matters because AI technology on its own is fundamentally imperfect. AI is only as good as the data it’s fed. That’s why stories of biased AI are common — you’ve probably heard some.  

To avoid this, Go1 AI utilizes information from 156 million yearly course completions, encompassing 130,000 data points from 250+ content providers in 48 languages. By leveraging data from our content library accessed by hundreds of users daily, we enable best-in-class content-to-learner matching and surface accurate, honest results. 

What’s more, we listen to learners. Recently, 87% of L&D professionals said they want the content they consume to be created by a subject matter expert. The survey concluded that “respondents are not opposed to L&D practitioners using AI technology to improve their efforts, but they still want humans to create, plan, and direct the activities.”  

Accordingly, we firmly believe AI should complement, not supersede, human creativity. AI is great at analyzing data and recognizing patterns. However, it lacks the nuance and emotional intelligence that only human judgement offers. Think of Go1 AI as your ally, picking up the slack when you want it to, and leaving you to focus on your strengths. Human judgement should always come first – Go1 AI is here to help.   

Finally, this is only the start! Over the coming months, we’ll have more exciting announcements as we continue to improve and refine Go1 AI. Keep an eye out for more to come.  

Go1 AI features are now available for select customers and partners. To learn more, contact your Customer Success Manager.  

We're announcing our latest product offering: Go1 AI. With Go1 AI, admins can turbocharge the content curation process, through features like enhanced search functionality, AI chat, and advanced personalization options.  

Go1 + Gen AI: Unlocking creative learning journeys

Skills are your most valuable workplace currency. They keep your business running. Whether your employees require hard, technical skills, soft skills (also known as power skills), or a healthy mix of both, you want to avoid skill gaps wherever possible.   

However, finding the resources to anticipate, avoid, and address skill gaps can be challenging. Don't worry, we’re here to help. We’ll start by analyzing the basics: what exactly are skill gaps and how do they come about? Then, we’ll outline practical strategies to anticipate skill gaps, before sharing tips to empower your workforce to upskill and reskill.   

As they say, change is the only constant. Technology changes. Businesses change. Job requirements change. Skill gaps emerge. And the cycle continues. As BambooHR explains skill gaps are “the disparity between the skills an employer expects their employees to have, and the actual skills employees possess.”    

Put simply, a skill gap occurs when an employee lacks at least one skill required for their job. For instance, a marketing professional needs to know how to use a VR headset for their next campaign. Until they have received training on how to use this device, you could say they have a skill gap.  

You might wonder: why hire someone who doesn’t have the necessary skills for a job? Well, it’s not that simple.  

The current rate of technological change means existing professional competencies quickly become outdated. Traditionally, the average half-life of a skill was 10-15 years. However, recent research finds this has shrunk significantly— down to 5 years for most skills and 2.5 years for highly technical skills. So, as explained in the research, “a skill learned today will be about half as valuable in just five years.” 

Further, the time needed to learn new skills is growing. According to IBM, “the time it takes to close a skills gap through traditional training has increased by more than 10 times in the past four years, jumping from 3 days to 36 days.”   

Accordingly, skills gaps are becoming more common as the lifecycle of skills shrinks and the time needed to learn new skills grows. It’s a vicious cycle, and leaders and trainers need to be on top of it. 

Trends and projections paint an expensive picture 

The skills gap has arrived—and it’s just getting started. PwC projects that by 2030, the skills gap will affect 85 million jobs, leading to a $8.5 trillion economic impact.  

Similarly, McKinsey found that 87% of businesses face current or upcoming skill gaps, including: 

44% expect to face skill gaps within the next five years 

Additionally, 1 in 5 workers admit their professional skills are not up to date, with 85% wishing their company offered more skills training. 

How to identify and anticipate skill gaps 

The ability to anticipate skill gaps will likely be vital in the future of work, separating the high performers from the also-rans. So, here are some we’ll tips to predict skill gaps that will leave your colleagues wondering if you keep a crystal ball under your desk.  

The first step to identifying organizational skills gaps should be conducting a training needs analysis. A training needs analysis helps identify knowledge and skill gaps, as well as what training is required for employees to perform their job to a high standard. Once you have identified knowledge gaps, you have a clear picture of what training is required to fill them.  

By assessing employee skills and comparing them to your strategic needs, you can identify existing skill gaps. After several needs analyses, you'll likely notice trends, allowing you to predict future skill gaps before they become unmanageable. 

To get started, use our Needs Analysis Tool, which includes a free template to conduct your own needs analysis.  

Workforce planning and succession management 

Long-term workforce planning can help you avoid unwanted surprises. Ask yourself: is there an employee who would be irreplaceable if they quit tomorrow? For instance, they’re the only one who knows how to operate a vital program. If so, their departure could expose you to sudden, unwanted skill gaps.   

Workforce planning can help you avoid this scenario. Understanding what skills your business will need and mapping these against your current staff can reveal critical shortages that require futureproofing. By incorporating succession planning into your skill gap identification strategy, you can proactively address potential gaps that may arise, thereby ensuring continuity in critical roles and providing employees with a clear path for career growth. 

Sometimes, identifying a skill gap is as simple as asking. During your next 1:1 meeting with an employee, try asking: are there any skills you're lacking to do your job? How can we help you develop those skills? Anticipating skill gaps doesn’t have to be a riddle—let your employees tell you directly!  

For some, this approach won’t work. They might fear getting in trouble for lacking skills. So, let employees offer anonymous feedback, too. You can then refine this process and build skill maps (i.e. lists of necessary skills) for each role over time.   

This approach may sound too good to be true, but it’s effective. 83% of people think they aren’t heard fairly or equally at work. To overcome this, employees have a simple request: 68% would feel heard if their company took feedback seriously and implemented meaningful change. It’s that simple!  

If you’re sick of the guesswork in trying to anticipate skill gaps, next time, just ask! 

Upskilling and reskilling strategies to empower your workforce 

Identifying skill gaps is one thing—addressing them is another. Luckily, various methods can empower your workforce to bridge those gaps and emerge as more robust, valuable assets.   

Digital learning as an on-demand solution 

In the digital age, learning isn’t confined to brick-and-mortar classrooms. Digital learning platforms like Go1 or Blinkist offer an array of training options that employees can access on-demand, fitting learning into their lives and job responsibilities seamlessly. This is pivotal for organizations keen to emphasize flexibility and agility.   

For example, check out this Future Skills Series playlist on Go1, which covers essential soft skills like empathy, active listening, and compassionate communication. 

Self-directed learning is another effective method for addressing skill gaps. This approach empowers the employee to own their development and choose training that aligns with their perceived skill gaps and career aspirations.    

Self-directed learning has become increasingly popular, with 43% of Gen Z and Millennials, and one-third of Gen X and Baby Boomers, saying they want fully self-directed learning at work.  

Filling skill gaps doesn't necessarily mean assigning mandatory training, but ensuring employees have the support and resources to direct their own learning. After all, who can anticipate your skill gaps better than you?   

Sometimes, the quickest fix is right under your nose. Internal mobility and job rotation initiatives allow employees to acquire new skills within different roles or departments.  

For those unfamiliar, job rotation is kind of like corporate musical chairs. Employees periodically switch between positions and departments within the company instead of sticking to one specific role, with the aim of cross-skilling and building a more well-rounded skillset. For instance, a nurse might switch between the maternity ward, elderly care, and A&E to gain experience caring for a range of patients. These experiences can spark innovation and cross-functional understanding, with 89% of employees reporting job rotation fulfilled their need to gain new skills.  

Similarly, 94% of HR professionals say internal recruiting helps retain their most valuable talent. Internal mobility is a win-win for businesses, as it's more cost-effective to promote internally than to hire and train a replacement.    

Start futureproofing your workforce   

Skill gaps may be growing, but don’t let that discourage you. To combat this trend, L&D professionals have more powerful tools than ever before—and they’re evolving just as fast. By using predictive data, needs assessments, digital learning, and innovative training techniques, you have the tools and insights to pre-emptively identify and address skill gaps. Some may see this as a challenge, but really, it’s an opportunity to build the most skilled, robust workforce possible. Who doesn’t want that?  

For more insights, check out our eBook on developing foundational skills for the future of work. 

We’ll outline practical strategies to anticipate skill gaps, before sharing tips to empower your workforce to upskill and reskill.

Proactive strategies to anticipate skill gaps

Ever find yourself wondering if AI is going to take over your job – or worse, take over every job? We get it – new advances in technology can feel unsettling, especially if you're not well-versed in how the technology works.  

The reality, though, is that AI's role in learning and development isn't a case of humans versus machines – the truth is far less daunting, but also far more exciting. By integrating artificial intelligence into L&D, humans and machines can work together to revolutionize learning for employees and lighten the workload for L&D professionals. 

As the L&D industry increases its AI use, we’re seeing AI function not as a replacement to human expertise but as an assistant that helps L&D teams work faster and more productively. In fact, organizations that have adopted AI for their learning programs have seen a 57% increase in efficiency on average! 

While AI can help streamline tasks and reduce human error, it isn’t fully autonomous. Humans still play a vital role in learning and development, and human knowledge is necessary for AI to successfully improve the learning experience. 

Keep reading to explore just a few ways that L&D is using AI in collaboration with human proficiency to ensure learning and development programs meet real human needs. 
 

AI-powered course creation is enabling L&D admins to build higher-quality courses faster. Note that AI isn’t creating courses on its own – AI is simply a tool that helps teams make content more effectively. 

This human approach to AI is widespread across L&D. In the promotional video for their AI-powered learning management system, LMS365 says, “To us, AI is not about replacing people. It’s about making people better, more engaged, and more successful.”  

With course builder tools like LMS365’s AI-assisted course creation, L&D admins can prompt Gen AI to create a course based on a specific piece of educational content, like a video, document, or presentation. After the course is created, admins can then further prompt the AI to customize the course for the unique needs of their employees. 

At first glance it may seem like AI is doing all the work here, but human involvement is vital for a high-quality outcome. Without an L&D admin’s specific knowledge about their company’s upskilling needs, the AI would simply create generic content. The admin’s expertise takes the course to the next level by tailoring it for their organization. 
 

L&D companies are releasing many AI tools and features focused on content search and recommendations – and for good reason. If you’ve ever been asked to find a course on a topic you’re not an expert in, you know how much time it takes to gain a baseline understanding of that topic before you can even start looking for content. With AI, there’s no need to spend hours researching and digging for just the right course. 

About 35% of L&D organizations are using AI to improve search and simplify tasks. Many of these organizations are migrating from traditional keyword search to AI-enhanced search for smarter content recommendations. How does it work? Rather than searching for a term like “business development” and getting results for every course that has the words “business” or “development” in the title or description, AI-enhanced search can better understand what you’re actually looking for and surface more relevant results.  

Absorb takes AI search one step further with intelligent ranking. This feature ranks search results in what the AI determines to be the best order according to the user’s history of searching for and enrolling in courses. While the AI determines the ranking, it makes its decisions based on real human data and behaviors. 
 

Personalization is another key L&D element that has been aided by AI in several different ways. First, AI is creating personalized learning pathways with help from L&D admins. Rather than browsing an entire catalog of content and selecting individual courses, admins can now tell the AI their learning goals and receive a personalized learning pathway in seconds. 

AI is also beginning to take its place in content curation. At Go1, for example, our content curation team uses generative AI programs as a starting point in their curation efforts. They might ask, “What’s a recommended pathway for new leaders?” or “What topics do you recommend for new leaders?” However, knowing that new leaders’ needs differ from one organization to the next, they then take the ideas and customize curated content. 

Take it from Shannon Herrera, Head of Content Curation at Go1: “AI is about enhancing human intelligence, not replacing it. It's a great tool to help us get started on things that can often be time-consuming, like research or building a basic program, and then, as L&D experts, we can go in and add the human elements to our programs, ensuring we’re meeting the unique needs of our employees and organizations.” 

It takes human expertise to successfully curate content – AI merely acts as the foundation that saves our experts time. 

But the relationship between Go1 and AI doesn’t stop with our internal teams. With Go1 AI, admins can now create personalized learning experiences for the entire workforce with support from our unique AI solution. Go1 AI gives Go1 admins access to some of the features we’ve already discussed, including AI-enhanced search, smart recommendations, and personalized playlists, plus additional features like AI chat and content evaluation, which we’ll review in more detail below. 
 

Let’s say you’ve run an AI-enhanced search on Go1 and found a few relevant courses. Normally, you might spend hours sampling the content to decide which one best fits your employees’ needs – but with Go1 AI, this is no longer necessary.  

Instead, Go1 AI gathers data through machine learning and uses it to supply learning outcomes, course summaries, topics and skills covered, and course ratings for all Go1 content. It can also use this information to compare courses on similar topics and evaluate which pieces of content are top contenders based on what you’re looking for as the admin. These evaluations come from real learner experiences – we simply use the data from AI to connect the dots. 

We hope this has helped you feel more confident about working alongside AI, instead of against it. Ultimately, AI isn’t going to replace the human element of L&D. AI may bring speed and productivity to learning and development, but it’s real humans who bring the heart to L&D. Embrace AI, and you’ll have more time to do what you do best – human-centered work. 

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to discover how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs. 

AI's role in learning and development isn't a case of humans versus machines. Learn how humans can work in partnership with AI to revolutionize learning.

Humanizing the use of AI in learning and development

Learning and development is changing rapidly, which means training that worked a year ago—or even a month ago—may no longer be an effective solution. Gone are the days when the same training content could be assigned to every employee.  

Today, personalized and targeted learning programs are becoming the norm, offering a tailored approach that benefits both individual employees and your organization as a whole. 

Understanding the importance of personalized training and implementing a targeted L&D program is crucial for unlocking potential within your team. Keep reading to learn how you can maximize your business’s impact through your learning and development offerings. 

Boost engagement and retention with personalized learning paths 

Every employee brings a unique set of skills, knowledge, and learning preferences to your organization. When harnessed correctly, your workforce’s diverse talents can become your company's greatest asset. 

So how do you take advantage of the wide-ranging skills represented on your team? The answer is simple— play to your workforce’s strengths with personalized learning paths! 

Personalized learning ensures each employee's training is as relevant and effective as possible. By providing employees with custom learning content based on their current roles, career goals, and proficiency levels, organizations see dramatic increases in engagement and retention of information. This isn't surprising—after all, when training is relevant to employee needs, learners are more likely to be invested and apply what they've learned to their work. 

There are many different ways to personalize learning. For example, because we know that different generations have different learning preferences, you might provide a series of microlearning courses for younger employees and one longer course for older employees. You may also find courses available in multiple languages to make engagement easier for employees whose first language differs from the rest of your workforce. 

Research shows that employees are up to 60% more engaged when presented with personalized courses instead of standardized training. The benefits here are twofold: while employees are more likely to enjoy and engage with their learning experiences, your organization will benefit from a more knowledgeable and effective workforce. 

Take advantage of AI to align career goals with company needs 

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a key player in learning and development programs, and leveraging AI in L&D allows you to take customization to the next level.  

With AI-enhanced learning, algorithms analyze learners' interactions, performance, and preferences while using the platform or service to recommend content that not only closes skill gaps but also helps the employee make progress toward their personal and professional goals. 

Your options for AI tools are expanding every day. Go1’s AI-powered learning content, for example, enables personalized learning at scale by providing valuable insights and learning content that resonates with employees’ current roles and future aspirations. You might also consider using GenAI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini to help you conduct market research and analyze skill gaps, get recommendations for relevant courses to include in specific learning paths, and help your team quickly provide training to your workforce. 

Regardless of which AI tools you choose to use, the efficiency they’ll add to your workflow will help you deliver targeted content to your team and ensure each moment employees spend learning is as productive as possible. 

Address skill gaps through targeted training 

The rapid pace of technological and economic changes in our modern world means we’re continually becoming aware of new skill gaps. The good news is, targeted training initiatives can effectively combat this constant flux in necessary workforce skills and empower employees to master the competencies they need to expand and strengthen their skillset.  

By conducting thorough skills gap analyses, companies can pinpoint the exact areas that need development—whether technical skills, soft skills, leadership abilities, or industry-specific knowledge.  

Determining which skill gaps exist in your company doesn't need to be complicated. Simply review your business goals and consider what skills are needed to achieve those goals. Then, look at the skills your organization excels at and pinpoint where your team is lacking. You might do this by analyzing job descriptions for current and future roles to identify required skills or evaluating your LMS usage data to determine which skills employees are searching for and consuming 

Finally, develop tailored training programs to help employees learn the skills your organization needs to succeed. This will enable a workforce that isn’t just capable but is also agile and prepared to adapt to changing market demands. 

The results speak for themselves. Organizations that implement targeted training initiatives often report enhanced performance and productivity among employees and teams. By investing in targeted training today, you're setting your company up for a stronger tomorrow. 

Employees who recognize that their employer is investing in their personal growth naturally have increased job satisfaction and company loyalty. Training programs that directly benefit your workforce’s career advancement are clear indicators to employees that they are valued and appreciated for their individual contributions to the organization. 

As a result, personalized and relevant training positively impacts employee morale and productivity. Employees who receive targeted, role-specific training often report feeling more confident and motivated in their jobs, which translates to better performance. Additionally, this sense of fulfillment can reduce turnover rates, improve retention, and create a positive cycle of learning and development. 

The movement toward personalized and targeted training reflects a broader shift in workplace culture—one that values the individual, recognizes the diversity of skills and learning styles present in the workforce, and seeks to harness that diversity for the collective good of the organization. L&D professionals who grasp and implement these methods aren’t just teaching—they’re paving pathways for continued organizational growth. 

For businesses serious about increasing their impact, investment in personalized and targeted training isn't just a nice-to-have—it's a need-to-have.  

By focusing on the unique learning needs of individual employees, companies enhance their collective strength and prepare themselves for a continually shifting future. So, prioritize personalized learning to create a smarter, stronger, and more satisfied workforce that’s prepared to tackle whatever new challenges come your way.

Ditch the one-size-fits-all approach! Learn about the benefits of personalized learning paths, AI-powered recommendations, and targeted training initiatives that address specific skill gaps and unlock individual potential.

The power of personalized training for maximum impact

Recently, we went live on LinkedIn with our friends from Litmos to discuss Go1’s multigenerational learning report. The session was hosted by Liz Jukovsky from Litmos, who was joined by Litmos’ Chief Learning Officer Jill Stefaniak, and Go1’s Chief Customer Officer Dan Hayward. Their wide-ranging discussion covered everything from generational stereotypes to Gen AI and microlearning.  

To kick things off, Jill shared her initial impressions of the multigenerational learning report, emphasizing how much L&D has changed from when Baby Boomers entered the workforce — when things like offsite training universities were common — to the modern experience of Gen Z, where L&D is integrated into the flow of work.  

“When I read the report, one of my biggest takeaways from this is that it’s a good reminder that we have four different generations within our organizations right now that have experienced L&D in a variety of different ways,” she recalled.   

Dan adds to this, showing that despite L&D’s evolution over time, most people still relish the opportunity to learn alongside other generations. This variety of perspectives and experiences deepens learning, rather than detracting from it.  

“One of the most interesting findings was that, in terms of those different age groups, almost 50% said that they appreciated the opportunity to learn with other age groups and learn from other age groups. 

One of the key takeaways is that we really need to avoid some of the stereotypes in design and oversimplifications around bucketing and pigeonholing these generations,” he said.  

Ultimately, generational stereotypes can hinder successful, meaningful learning experiences and relationships. While some may say Baby Boomers are bad with technology or Gen Z has no drive to work hard, these are not inherently true statements, nor do they help our workforces come together. Instead, we should look to come together as a larger workforce that can bridge gaps and learn from one another.  

 Next, the conversation turned to mentorship and Generation Z (Gen Z). Jill noted there is a strong relationship between mentorship, informal learning, and succession planning, which was discussed in the report. 

Recently, we went live on LinkedIn with our friends from Litmos to discuss Go1’s multigenerational learning report. We'll recap this wide-ranging discussion.